Album Review

IKnowAGhost – Deviations

• 27th Aug 2010

To the untrained ear, all metalcore sounds the same, the singer sounds as though he is vomiting, the drums pound away like that annoying migraine which will not shift even with the strongest over the counter painkillers and guitars come at you with so much fuzz there is a fog like haze similar to those marsh scenes in a Dickensian novel.

I Know A Ghost are no different, but there is something unique from these shamans of the midlands. Their sound is very dungeonesque in terms of all the space with all the solidness of a castle wall. Escaping their vice like grip on you is like trying to climb a sheer cliff face without ropes – foolish and damned near impossible.

Obviously you could name scores of other bands, but that would be no fun and track This is Madness is an insanely driven steak straight through the heart. Like demons their sound can change in an instant and does on From What We Believe brings the darkness of Victorian horror science fiction adventures with playful synthesised noises owing more to Boards of Canada than Glassjaw. Some would say this is a recipe for disaster, but is in fact a delight for the Halloween parties the world over. The crème de la crème and perfect epitath for this cauldron of panic, chaos and simmering

The whole is certainly greater than the sum of its parts and I Know A Ghost is certainly a creation of which Mary Shelly would have been proud of. Trail blazing is what they do best and they do it here with all the gusto of a paraffin fuelled blowout.